DETROIT, Mich.–Some stage shows are just a well-shaped giggle-fest with not much in the way of meaning, metaphor or tragic heroes. Such is the case with Something Rotten, a thoroughly enjoyable farce about the time of Shakespeare, playing this week at the Fisher Theatre.

The Bottom brothers, Nick (Matthew Michael Janisse) and Nigel (Richard Spitaletta) run a theatre company at the time of Shakespeare, who used to act with them but went off to start his own company and play-writing enterprise. The Bottom boys are a bit down on their luck, money is running out and Nick is so desperate he goes to see Thomas Nostradamus (Greg Kalafatas) for a look into the future so they can write a show that will really catch on and maybe even eclipse the fame of Shakespeare.

The future, he says, is a new form of play called “a musical” that involves actors stopping their speeches to sing, and possibly even dance a bit. This bit, which leds to a big broad, hilarious musical number, “A Musical,” featuring Nostradamus and the ensemble.

The futurist conjures up details of what will be the greatest play of all time, which he says will be called “Omelette,” (not Hamlet) and proceeds to relate a very funny litany of story scraps that touch on “Rent,” “The Music Man,” “Hair,” “Les Miserables,” “The King and I,” “West Side Story” and a raft of other nods to all the famous shows. Nick comes to think with references to “ham” and “Danish,” the show must be about breakfast.

The book for Something Rotten by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, music by Kirkpatrick with Wayne Kirkpatrick, is just very clever. If it fawlters a bit, it’s that the joke gets a bit overdone by Act 2 when we are still hearing Nostradamus still rattling off jokes about future Broadway hits and Hamlet.

There is a subplot with Nigel falling in love with Portia (Jennifer Elizabeth Smith) with plenty of references and gags pointing to Romeo & Juliet, which has been the hit show in London that month, and the objections of Portia’s effeminate Puritan father, Brother Jeremiah (Mark Saunders).

In Act 2, we move to the show within the show, aptly titled “Something Rotten,” a reference to a rotten egg in the omelette and, of course, “something rotten in the state of Denmark” in Hamlet.

Something Rotten never tries to be more than it is, a sophomoric send-up of Shakespeare that reads and runs like maybe an extended sketch written by the writing room from Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows. But there isn’t much wrong with that. Indeed, Mel Brooks has made a living off the formula in film and stage, and The Book of Mormon plays to sell-outs using the same formula.

The bawdy humor and phallic references starts, but by no means end, with over-sized cod-pieces worn by the men. Nigel reaches into his cod piece with a “something I’d like to show you,” talking to Portia, but pulls out a sonnet that he then reads in a parallel joke about premature ejaculation. Sniggers abound in the audience, but so do some audible eye-rolls. And then there is Brother Jeremiah’s ceaseless string of hand-fanning erection references.

Okay, it’s funny. And the music is fun. Standing out in this touring show are Kalafatas, with a bigger than life comedic timing and presence and the striking Emily Kristen Morris as Bea, Nick’s long-suffering, sassy, loyal and dedicated feminist wife. “This is the ’90s! We’ve got a woman on the throne.” Too, Matthew Baker as Shakespeare, written to be the glam rock star of his day, is amusing and appropriately snide and elitist.

Shakespeare is the target of the story, jealousy plus charging the Bard with being a plagiarist of Nigel Bottom. Of course, the story line is validated by various theories that Shakespeare did not actually do the writing.

Matthew Croft does an excellent job as music director, but at times the sound engineering in the Fisher Theatre was an issue, with some sound on the body mics cutting out and uneven sound on some of the big ensemble numbers.

Even with its excesses, Something Rotten is a fun diversion from the trials of the day.